Buffering

“I need to post on the blog,” I’ve been thinking, and then I left the post draft open in a background tab for three hours.

There is nothing terribly interesting happening, other than things to whine about, and no one likes that. Medication hassle! Not sleeping! Back taxes! The crushing weight of working in publishing during capitalism! The usual.

The Dweller sale picked up some new readers, in no small part due to the shares on Bsky, so I hope they grab some of the other standalones. I’m focused on trying to refill the writing well as much as possible because I’ve got a lot of stuff I need to write this spring, including a Waverly short to be included with a StoryBundle thing in May, and I’m gutting and rewriting large chunks of Waverly 4 from scratch.

Final files for Alone at Night are almost entirely done–I just need to add the usual patron thanks, and in the case of the hardcover, finish some illustrations (I am doing them myself, so they’re not as good as Alan’s but I don’t have the funds to pay for complex drawings this time around), and complete the full wraps. Print should release in time with the ebooks on April 2.

I noted this on Bsky but I will say it here in the hopes of reaching more people:

If you buy paperbacks…

Stuff comes up and people forget; books are expensive and people delay buying, etc–I know this, that’s cool. But if you want Waverly specifically in paperback, please start purchasing the second and, when released, third book.

I’m happy to put out print for those readers, but my usual print buyers have been getting the Waverly hardcovers–which is great! I am so glad to sell a couple copies of those given all the work that goes into them.

But when it comes to paperback sales, I checked, and A Wild Kind of Darkness sold one copy. One. The first sold 6 (and there’s one return and/or cancelled order give Amazon has a discounted one sitting there). I have not even hand-sold books; I got five at my author’s discount, put one on my shelf, and gave one to my mother. I still have three for sale, they’ve never moved.

Having paperbacks introduces extra problems with KDP as I’ve talked about before. When people return paperbacks, or when they cancel an order as it’s being printed, a copy ends up sitting in a warehouse, and Amazon will keep lowering the price over and over trying to get rid of it. I have to then unpublish the paperback entirely so that they actually sell the warehouse copy, otherwise they’ll just print and ship a new one at the discount, and the discount remains. Eventually, they will start dropping my Kindle price to match, and I get paid on the discounted price, not retail, plus there’s the risk of price-matching.

It’s fine if I’m actually selling copies, but most of the time I don’t in print and, again, this is a huge potential headache for me–I have a lot of books, and it’s a lot to monitor.

If Alone at Night, the third in the series, is not moving paperback copies, I’ll just be doing ebook and hardcover for this series from the fourth book on.

So consider this a heads-up, it’s totally okay if folks don’t want paperbacks! But if you do…I have to actually see copies selling to justify the time and stress that goes into making them lol. If the fourth isn’t in paperback next year, that’s why.

eBook buyers, make sure you preorder! I’m three shy of the last one’s preorder numbers on Kindle and it would be nice to know she’s got that tiny core audience.

Kindle – Kobo – iBooks – Nook